


Thirsty

by radioactivesaltghoul



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Vampire, F/M, Fluff, maybe vampire Ben Solo?, vampire rey, who knows? not rey!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-08-07 15:19:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16410977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radioactivesaltghoul/pseuds/radioactivesaltghoul
Summary: “I think my new roommate is a vampire,” Rey says as she flops down at the table across from Finn.Finn’s glass is halfway to his mouth, but he pauses and sets it down to give her a look. “Rey,” he says slowly. “You’rea vampire.”Or: the one in which the only possible reason that Ben Solo could bethatalluring is because he’s also member of the undead.





	Thirsty

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Жажда](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16476224) by [Elafira](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elafira/pseuds/Elafira)



> Trying my hand at participating in a reylo AU week event, so here goes nothing, I guess? Enjoy vampire!Rey and maybevampire!Ben.

“I think my new roommate is a vampire,” Rey says as she flops down at the table across from Finn.

Finn’s glass is halfway to his mouth, but he pauses and sets it down to give her a look. “Rey,” he says slowly. “ _You’re_ a vampire.”

“No, I mean, I think he’s a _real_ vampire.”

“ _You’re_ a real vampire.”

“I’m a bargain basement vampire,” she says exasperatedly. She and Finn have been over this many times. She’s insecure about the fact that she isn’t like the vampires found in various legends and fiction.

“You drink blood, and you sleep during the day,” Finn says. “I’m pretty sure that makes you a real vampire.”

“I drink animal blood, and I don’t _have_ to sleep during the day. The sun doesn’t kill me. It just gives me a really bad sunburn. People don’t smell like food to me. And I’m not inhumanly strong or alluring or magical.”

Finn looks like he wants to argue, but he takes another sip of his drink instead. “Fine,” he says. “So why do you think your roommate is a ‘real’ vampire, then?”

“First of all,” she says, holding up a finger. “I never see him awake during the day.”

“How would you know? You’re always asleep during the day.”

“Second of all,” she says, holding up another finger. “I’ve never seen him eat. The only thing in our fridge is fruit and a bunch of condiments.” Fruit is the only _food_ food she can eat. (Blood doesn’t count.) It’s the only food that doesn’t cause her to hurl her guts up as soon as it hits her stomach. She’s pretty sure it’s the universe’s sick idea of a vampire joke, making her mimic a fruit bat’s diet. 

“How do you know he doesn’t order take-out every night?” her best friend says. “Or maybe he has a minifridge in his room where he stores all his food. You’re not the only person who’s obsessively paranoid about people stealing your food, you know.” And Finn would know. He grew up in the system just like Rey. That’s actually how they met; they lived in the same home briefly before aging out of the system.

“Third of all,” Rey says. “There’s no other reason why I could possibly be—” She stops herself just in time. “Why I could possibly be so annoyed with the fact that we’re on the same schedule, so he’s _always_ around.”

Finn raises an eyebrow. He can probably see right through her, but he doesn’t say anything. _Good_ , she thinks. Rey isn’t sure why it’s so embarrassing to admit that she’s hopelessly attracted to her roommate. But there’s no reason for it other than that ridiculous _allure_ that fictional vampires always have.

Case in point: earlier this evening, she got a sudden eyeful of tall, broad, shirtless, muscular Ben Solo standing in her kitchen. If Rey had a beating heart, she knows her face would have been bright red as she gawked at him. “Don’t you have something you can put on?” she sputtered. “A cowl, or something?” _A cowl?_ she thought. _What the hell am I saying right now?_ She doesn’t even know if Ben owns a cowl. (Hell, do people still wear cowls? Rey isn’t very good at keeping up. Too busy focusing on surviving most of the time.)

He looked like he might have been flustered for all of half a second before ignored her question and said, “And good evening to you too, Rey.” He turned and retreated back into his own room before she even had a chance to process the whole exchange.

“How’d you find this guy, anyway?” Finn asks, bringing Rey back to the present.

“Craigslist,” she admits. “It’s a perfectly normal way to find a roommate,” she adds before Finn has a chance to say anything. “And anyway, it’s not like I had a lot of time to find someone. I appreciate you letting me crash on your couch for a little while, but your apartment is barely big enough for you, Rose, and Poe to live in. We were all tripping over each other.” _And they don’t know I’m a vampire,_ she adds silently. It’s a little awkward to explain why she avoids going out in the sunlight at all costs. It’s even more awkward to explain why she’s microwaving a glass of pig’s blood in the middle of the night.

(Also, they have the _cutest_ dog, and Rey doesn’t want any of them to think that her thirst for animal blood will cause her to attack BB-8.)

“You’re always welcome at my place,” Finn says, but Rey knows that deep down, he doesn’t actually mean it. He moved to the city a few months before she did, and she only moved because she’s clingy and she missed her best friend. She’d been so set on staying in her hometown, but then she realized one day that she was done holding on to the fantasy that the parents who abandoned her were going to come back for her. Not long after, she was attacked one night and next thing she knew, she could barely stand going out in the sunlight and she was drinking her neighbor’s cat dry.

It was an unsettling week, to say the least.

“Thanks,” she says, shooting him what she hopes is a grateful smile. “But I’m locked into my lease, anyway.”

“Why don’t you ask him about it?” Finn says. “Maybe you two could bond over your shared, uh, condition.”

Rey has actually considered that. But it’s such a personal thing to tell someone, and she’s oddly afraid that he’s going to judge her for choosing to drink animal blood instead of human blood. (She’s never been very tempted by the idea of drinking human blood. Sometimes she wonders if that’s because she’s still so new to the whole vampire thing. It just seems so... _intimate._ )

“What am I going to say to him? ‘Hi, I’ve noticed that you’re nocturnal and you never eat. Are you dead?’”

“Well when you put it like that…” Finn says with a grin.

She sighs. “I have to go. I don’t want to clock in late again.” Maz is a great boss (she has never once questioned Rey’s ‘I can work all night, but please don’t make me come in before sunset’ request), but Rey doesn’t want to push her limits.

A bargain basement vampire tending a bar. That’s what Rey’s life has come to. She's the punchline of the world's worst joke.

 

* * *

 

She spends the next three weeks tracking Ben’s movements.

Early on, when she first moved in, she asked him what his job was. “I’m a contractor,” he said. “But I can’t really talk about it. I work on a lot of classified stuff, and I usually work weird hours. Just so you know.”

“That’s fine,” she said. “I’m a bartender. I’m usually out most nights.”

“Cool,” he said, but he didn’t sound like he meant it.

Now, she knows that Ben’s “weird hours” are at night, usually the same ones she works. Lately, she’s started to wonder if he’s caught on to her. They’ve never really been social with each other, both preferring to hide out in their rooms, but she’s caught him hanging out in the kitchen or the living room more and more.

“You eat a lot of fruit,” he says one night. It’s Rey’s night off and, apparently, Ben’s, too.

She briefly wonders if she should tell him the truth about her strange dietary habits, but instead she says, “I like vitamin C.”

“That’s cool,” he says. “Me too.”

Rey turns to look at him. Either he knows she’s trying to track him, or he’s terrible at being casual. Both, probably. “Right,” she says, unsure of how to respond to that statement.

There’s another pause before he asks, “Are you doing anything tonight?”

This is new. “Not really,” she says. “I guess I was just going to watch tv and go for a walk.” She needs fresh blood and it’s either hit up one of the butcher shops that sell pig blood or skulk around a park at night, hunting for rats. Both options are pretty gross, and she’d rather not share those plans with Ben-who-might-be-a- _real_ -vampire-Solo.

“Do you like _The X-Files_?” he asks. “There’s a marathon on tonight that I was going to watch. You’re welcome to join me. If you want.”

Rey’s never seen _The X-Files_ —she’s not even sure of what it is, to be honest—but it would give her a good reason to observe Ben. She can put off the walk for a little while. “Sure,” she says, forcing a small smile.

“Really?” Ben says, brightening. Rey finds herself thinking that it’s endearing to see him excited like this. “It’s a weird show, but it’s really good.” He launches into an explanation that Rey can’t quite keep up with. Something about FBI agents, secret government conspiracies, and unresolved sexual tension.

Not too long later, she finds herself sitting on the opposite side of the couch from Ben, trying her hardest to observe him without being obvious about it. But the show’s actually really good, and she gets so caught up in the drama that she misses the looks that he’s giving her. “So you like it, huh?” he says after the episode ends.

“It’s weird,” she says, but she doesn’t hold back her smile.

“You want to keep watching, then?” She can’t figure out why he sounds so hopeful. Maybe he’s trying to get her to lower her defenses so that he can attack her. He’s in for a nasty surprise if he does. In any case, Rey figures that she’s safe enough for now. “I think I’m kind of hooked,” she says as she settles back down on the couch.

The second episode is just as good as the first. But the third episode… Rey freezes as the camera shows Agent Mulder tackling someone to the ground before driving a stake through his heart. Ben must be paying attention to her, because he says, “What, you don’t like vampires?” like he’s trying to tease her.

_He can’t know! Can he?_ He’s not allowed to figure her out before she figures him out. When she doesn’t say anything, he adds in a more cautious tone, “If you’re afraid of vampires, this episode isn’t scary. I promise. It’s pretty funny, actually.”

“I’m not scared of vampires,” she forces herself to say. “I think they’re overrated, actually. The market is saturated with vampire drama.”

“So I take it you haven’t seen _True Blood,_ either?”

Rey was never a big fan of vampires, but her interest in fictional ones dropped to zero when she became one. “Not my thing,” she says. In the interest of trying to appear _cool_ and _casual_ so as to not tip Ben off that she’s been watching him, she says, “But if you say it’s good, I guess I can give it a chance.”

She doesn’t miss the small, satisfied smile that appears on his face. And she doesn’t like the things it does to her stomach.

 

* * *

 

Rey still hasn’t figured Ben out two months later. After that first TV night, they ended up making it a regular thing, and she lets him convince her to watch all 218 episodes of _The X-Files_ (plus both movies). Then she convinces him to try _Brooklyn Nine-Nine_ , even though it’s a completely different genre of television. And she thinks that even if he is a real vampire, at least he’s one with a good sense of humor. Plus, she loves the sound of his laugh as the hijinks of fictional detectives play out on the television screen. She starts finding herself smiling through her shifts at Maz’s, thinking about what he’ll say when she tells him what stupid things she overhears while at work. (Ben seems to find her work stories amusing, for some reason she can’t figure out.)

But there’s something that’s been bothering Rey lately. If he’s another vampire, why does he smell so mouth-wateringly good?

It started small. Just something she noticed once or twice when she walked by the bathroom after he got out of the shower. And then she started to notice it while they were sitting on the couch, watching TV and eating fruit salad. (He denies that he does it for her, but he makes fruit salad a _lot._ ) And lately it’s like it’s taken all of her self-control to not pin him down on the couch so that she can just fucking _smell_ him. Which is _so_ weird, even for her.

Rey is, for lack of a better word, thirsty. For her roommate. Who may or may not also be a vampire.

 

* * *

 

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she says to Finn one night. “It’s like, I think I want his blood? But he might be a vampire? So I don’t know why I’m so thirsty for him.”

Finn groans and lays his head on the table. He lets it rest there for a moment before saying, “Rey, have you ever considered the fact that you, you know, _like_ him?”

“What? No. No way.” Rey doesn’t _like_ people. Especially not now that she’s a vampire. She’s seen enough vampire movies to know what happens when vampires get horny.

“Listen to yourself,” Finn says. “You like him. You talk about him all the time. You spend your nights off sitting on the couch with him, watching TV and eating the only normal food you can eat.”

“I’m observing him,” she protests. “I have to know if he’s a vampire or not!”

“Why is that so important to you?”

“Because,” she says, not sure how to answer. “It just is.” She and Finn sit in silence until her alarm goes off, signaling the start of her shift.

She can’t stop thinking about the conversation though, and when she gets home hours later, she barely acknowledges Ben’s “Hey, how was work?” before shutting herself in her room.

It’s almost sunrise, anyway.

The next night, she waits until the last possible moment before slinking out of her room so that she can go to work. Ben must have already left, because there’s no sign of him anywhere in the kitchen or the living room. Just a whiff of whatever is so _Ben_ in the air that leaves her thirsty for more.

Her shift feels longer than normal tonight, and it’s more effort that it has been in a while to put on her Rey-the-Pretty-and-Very-Human-Bartender face. A couple of regulars ask what’s wrong, and Maz, bless her soul, tells them to leave her poor bartender alone. She pulls Rey aside at the end of the night to ask what’s going on.

“It’s nothing,” Rey says. “I just have a lot on my mind.”

Maz gives her a look like she knows there’s more to the story, but she doesn’t pry.

Rey prays that Ben is either still at work or already locked in his room when she gets home, but luck is not on her side. When she opens the apartment door, she spies him sitting at the table, almost like he was waiting for her to come home. Something about it makes her dead, silent heart ache. She doesn’t know why.

“What’s wrong?” he says, standing up.

“Why does everyone keep asking me that tonight?” she snaps. “I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”

“Rey—” he starts, but she brushes past him and slams the door to her room. She thinks she hears him sigh, and she’s not sure why she feels so conflicted over it.

The same thing happens the next night: slinking out after Ben is already gone, struggling to be cheery at work, and Maz’s questioning gaze. Rey looks so bad that Maz pulls her aside and tells her to go home after the bar closes. “Leave all of the cleanup to me and Chewie,” she says. “Go sort out whatever it is that’s got you down.” Rey opens her mouth to protest that there’s nothing that needs sorting out, but Maz is already pushing her out the door.

She prays that Ben won’t be around when she gets home, but she knows that luck won’t be on her side. When she gets home, he’s standing in the kitchen, mixing a bowl of fruit salad together. “Rey,” he says when she tries to rush past him. “What’s going on? Is this about _Game of Thrones_? I was joking the other day; we don’t actually have to watching if you don’t want to—”

Rey has no idea what’s going through her head when she grabs Ben’s collar and pulls him down for a kiss. He makes a surprised noise, but he doesn’t try to pull away. At least, not until something registers for both of them.

“You’re _hot_ ,” Rey gasps as Ben says “Why are you so cold?”

“You can’t be hot,” she says, putting her hands on his face. She can feel the blood pumping as her thumb brushes his neck. _Wow_ does she want it more than she’s ever wanted anything in her life, and that’s saying something. “You’re supposed to be dead like me." 

“Wait, _what_?” he yelps, taking a step back. “You’re dead? How the fuck are you _dead_?”

“How are you _alive_?” she shoots back. “You sleep during the day. You never eat anything other than fruit!”

“I sleep during the day because most of the people I work with are on the other side of the planet,” he says. “And it’s cheaper to rent coworking space at night. Wait, is that why _you_ sleep all day? You’re dead?”

Shit. This is not how she wanted this conversation to go at all. Not that she ever actually wanted to have this conversation in the first place, mind you, but the horrified look in Ben’s eyes would be making her heart pound right now if she still had a beating heart.

Rey didn’t realize until that exact moment that the reason she didn’t want to have this conversation is that it would change everything between them. And she doesn’t think she can handle the abandonment of not having her stupid fruit-salad-and-TV nights with her stupid not-dead roommate.

“Are you...okay?” he asks cautiously, reaching a hand out. “When did this happen?”

_What?_ Why isn’t he running away in fear? “Not long before I moved here,” she says quietly. “I don’t know how it happened. I was attacked one night and when I woke up, I realized I needed blood to stay alive.” His eyes widen in fear and she adds, “Not that I’m a danger! I’ve never drank human blood. I won’t hurt you. I promise.” _Please believe me,_ she adds silently.

He reaches to tuck her hair behind her ear, letting his fingers brush her cheek as he pulls his hand back. “Your skin is freezing,” he says.

“Yeah,” she replies. “My heart doesn’t beat. Blood doesn’t pump. I don’t feel the cold anymore, though, which is sorta nice.”

“Can I...feel it?” he says, his hand hovering over her heart.

There’s nothing to feel—that’s kind of the point—but Rey doesn’t push him away as he lays his hand hesitantly on her chest. His skin feels hot and _alive_ in a way that she hasn’t felt in a long time and the smell of him is so strong that she’s clenching her jaw, all of her willpower diverted into not shoving him against the wall and sinking her teeth into his neck. She feels the pressure in her gums that means that her fangs are popping, so she clamps her lips shut, praying that Ben doesn’t get the wrong idea. 

Well, okay. He wouldn’t be _wrong_ if he knew that she wanted to drink his blood. But there’s a pretty big difference between “I want to attack you because I’m a monster” and “I want to attack you because you smell _so fucking good_ and I can’t get enough of it.”

“Whoa,” he whispers. “That’s—wait, do you have _fangs_?”

_Oh no_. Rey turns her head away and covers her mouth with her hand, although it’s not like that’s going to make it any less obvious what’s going on. To make matters worse, Ben hasn’t taken his hand off of her chest, which means that he’s only inches from her face. She may not feel the cold weather around her, but she sure as hell can feel the heat radiating from his body. And there’s a steady _thump-thump, thump-thump_ that she can hear calling to her.

This is really, really bad.

“How have I never noticed that you have fangs?” he says, oblivious to Rey’s inner torment. “We’ve been living together for months. I’ve seen you eat loads of times." 

“Ben,” she manages to squeak out. She hopes he realizes that it’s a warning.

“I can’t believe my hot roommate is a fucking _vampire,_ ” he says. He’s still touching her chest as if waiting for her dead heart to suddenly decide that it wants to start beating again. If Rey were capable of coherent thought at the moment, she would realize exactly what he’s saying. 

Unfortunately, she’s _not_ capable of coherent thought, and her resolve breaks as she hears his heartbeat pick up. Before either of them can react, she pushes his hand off of her chest and shoves him up against the wall, pinning him in place to the best of her ability.

Being a bargain basement vampire means no superpowers, though, so Ben could easily shove her away if he wanted. And yet he doesn’t. His heart rate has picked up, but he doesn’t seem scared or uncomfortable, really. If anything, he seems... _excited_ by this. “Are you going to bite me?” he breathes.

“I don’t drink human blood,” she says, eyes fixed on the vein in his neck. But _oh_ , she wants it so badly that she’s leaning in to run her tongue over his neck, as if that will cure the craving. It doesn’t, but she likes the way his skin tastes, and she _really_ likes the way he sighs and whispers her name.

“I can’t tell if you’re trying to seduce me or eat me,” he says as the tips of her pointed canines scrape lightly across his skin. Judging by the way she can feel how hard he is against her stomach, he’d be happy with either option.

_Seduce me or eat me._ Well, if she’s being honest…”Me either,” she admits. Maybe Finn was right. Maybe this is all simply that she _likes_ him, and her mind has been looking for ways to explain an emotion that she’s never really felt before. 

Or maybe he just smells _really fucking good_ to everyone, not just bargain basement vampires like Rey.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she whispers. The words come out a bit strange, making Rey realize that she’s never tried to talk with her fangs out before. Weird. What’s also weird is that she’s warming up at the points where his body is in contact with hers. Which should be impossible, but then again, vampires are supposed to be impossible, so who knows how this actually works?

But he’s baring his neck to her and she’s vaguely aware of the way his hands have wrapped around her waist, pulling her flush against him and now, on top of wanting to drink his blood, she wants to climb him like a fucking tree.

It’s not like Rey’s never felt sexual desire. She’s just never felt it quite like this. Whether that’s because she’s a vampire now or because there’s something special about Ben, she doesn’t know. 

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she repeats. “I think I just want to fuck you.”

He groans. “God, that’s what I’ve wanted for ages,” he says, grinding his hips into hers. And _fuck_ that feels good.

“And maybe drink your blood a little bit, too.”

That causes him to pause. Before he can say anything, she adds, “I don’t know. I haven’t been doing this for very long. My fangs won’t go away, though.” 

“I’m pretty sure that’s always a sex thing in vampire movies,” he says. She can’t tell if he means it as a joke or not.

Either way, she has to make a decision. “Right,” she says. Somehow, she manages to pull herself back just enough to ask, “Your room or mine?”

“I have black sheets,” he blurts out. When he sees the questioning look she gives him, he adds, “So they won’t show bloodstains easily.”

That does it. The still-human part of Rey’s brain is horrified by what she does next, but the vampire brain takes over as the fact that he’s freely offering himself to her hits her and next thing she knows, she’s sinking her fangs into his neck.

She’s been trying to deny it, but she’s spent a _lot_ of time thinking about how Ben’s blood will taste. Like chocolate? Like wine? Like sex? But it doesn’t taste like any of those things. Instead, it just tastes like...blood. Which is rather anticlimactic after all of that thirsting and struggling and pining.

Okay. So maybe this _is_ all just about sex, then.

Rey wonders what this must feel like for him. She doesn’t remember what happened when she was turned, so she has no frame of reference for being bit by a vampire. But judging from the way he moans and digs his fingers into her hips, it must feel pretty damn good. And it’s probably a good thing that he just tastes like normal blood and doesn’t taste extraordinary, or anything, because it makes it easier for her to pull back before she can hurt him.

It would really, _really_ suck if she left him too lightheaded to actually do anything after this. No pun intended.

She licks the last few drops off his neck, amazed at the way the cut has already begun to scab over. “I guess that’s one thing the vampire legends got right,” she murmurs. Her fangs are still out, but she no longer feels that same monster desire for his blood. All that’s left is a very _human_ desire for his cock.

“I can’t believe how good that felt,” Ben sighs as he relaxes back against the wall. Rey braces herself in case she misjudged and he passes out due to blood loss, but when he adds “That might be better than sex,” she figures he’s fine.

“Really?” she says in a voice that surprises her. “I think I’ll have to give you something to compare it to, then.”

 

* * *

 

Finn spits out his beer when Rey sits down at the table the next night and says, “So he’s not a vampire.”

“How did you find _that_ out?” he asks, but she can tell that he already knows the answer.

It’s a good thing that she can’t bruise anymore. Otherwise he’d probably be poking fun at the marks that would be all over her neck. (Not that Ben was trying to act like a vampire last night. She just has a really sensitive neck.)

“You were right,” she admits.

“About?” He’s going to make her say it, isn’t he?

She sighs. “I wanted to fuck him all along.”

Finn raises an eyebrow. “Is that all?”

No, that’s not all. The sun had risen earlier than Rey would have liked, otherwise she’s pretty sure she and Ben would have kept going at it. He jokingly asked her where she kept her coffin, and she elbowed him in response. “I’m staying right here all day long,” she murmured, curling up with him. The scent of him surrounding her so completely was surprisingly soothing as she drifted off, considering how long it had been driving her crazy for.

She woke up next to him when the sun went down, amazed that he hadn’t gone anywhere. And when she’d said as much to him, he kissed her and said “I’m not going anywhere. I live here, you know.” She couldn’t tell if he meant it as a joke or not until he added, “I don’t want you to go anywhere, either. Just as long as you don’t, you know, drink my blood without my consent.”

“I would never,” she said. “I like you too much to kill you.” 

And maybe she didn’t make that clear enough before, because Ben’s face practically melted into a smile as he said, “Yeah, I feel it, too.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> The vampires in this are partially inspired by [“The Reformed Vampire Support Group” by Catherine Jinks](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5266733-the-reformed-vampire-support-group).  
> The fruit thing was blatantly ripped off from the movie [_Fright Night_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fright_Night).  
>  And the X-Files episode referenced here is 5x12, [Bad Blood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Blood_\(The_X-Files\)).
> 
> I'm on tumblr [@radioactivesaltghoul](https://radioactivesaltghoul.tumblr.com/).


End file.
